[Distutils] Requirent specifiers specified? :)

[Jim Fulton]

On Jun 22, 2006, at 6:51 PM, Phillip J. Eby wrote:

> At 04:54 PM 6/22/2006 -0400, Jim Fulton wrote:
>> In any case, I expect that having people build tools on top of
>> setuptools is a use case
>> you anticipated.  For people to do that, they sometimes need precise
>> specifications
>> of behavior.
>
> Of course -- but I didn't anticipate that they would need anything  
> more than the ability to test whether a version matches a requirement.

I think I've explained, and I thought you understood why that wasn't  
adequate for me.

...

> Also, at some point, one does what one can with the available  
> manpower.  Bob Ippolito was the only person besides me who was  
> actively involved in the design process at the time -- and he was  
> kind of like, "whatever, man" on the subject.  :)  It would've been  
> nice to have had your participation then.  Now, we'll pretty much  
> have to live with what we've got.

1. You should know that no system is perfect.  You can't anticipate  
all requirements up
      front.  Surely, you want people to use this system beyond those  
who invented it.
     It's also not practical for all of us to get involved in every  
design at it's inception.

2. I have tried not to ask you to implement my use cases.  There are  
a number of reasons for
     this, including:

     - I don't know fully what my use cases are.  After all, use  
cases change with experience.

     - I don't want to disrupt setuptools development. I don't think  
setuptools should
       try to meet everyone's needs.  I do think that people should  
be able to meet their
       own needs on top of setuptools.  I think setuptools has stood  
up very well in this regard.

I really haven't asked for much. I believe the only changes you've  
made for me so far have been
bug fixes.  I don't intend to ask for much.  The only non-bug-fix  
change I've asked for
so far has been to declare public a pre-exiting API so that I can  
implement what I want
myself.

Of course, I've also asked that some semantics be documented.  I  
needed this documentation
for what I was doing.  I also believe that documenting things well  
sheds important light on
them.  You learn things about decisions to make by explaining these  
decisions to other.

I think setuptools is pretty cool and I have sung it's praises in  
many forums, admittedly,
even before I know what I was talking about. ;)  I don't regret  
that.  I'm building a "buildout"
system on top of setup tools that will help it meet use cases that it  
doesn't meet now. I
appreciate your advice and support during this process process and  
look forward to
more of the same in the future.

Jim

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